Accra, Ghana
MCI’s work in Accra began with a series of focused studies of specific challenges facing this rapidly burgeoning city. Two successive urban planning courses led by Columbia University faculty and five summer research projects in 2010 produced a wealth of information and a prodigious bibliography to jumpstart an initial sharing of resources, insights and expertise. The urban planning, policy and design work undertaken to-date includes an overview of Accra’s public health system, the region-wide e-waste industry now headquartered in Accra and the history of land-use policy for the city. Detailed planning and land use analysis are critical to this work, as is MCI’s GIS mapping of the low-income neighborhood of Nima; designs and architectural plans for residential and commercial sites in Nima and in Ga Mashie, part of Old Accra, carried out in close collaboration with the Earth Institute’s Urban Design Lab; and the scoping, planning and designs for community rehabilitation, local economic development and a market upgrade in the under-resourced coastal neighborhood of Korle Gonno. MCI has also engaged in various social sector projects, including piloting a Neonatal Survival Training Program, in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson, American Academy of Pediatrics, AmeriCares and local and national government agencies; and the replication in Accra of an Israeli-led early childhood education program first introduced in the Millennium City of Kumasi and now expanded, thanks to the Government of Israel, the Accra Metropolitan Education Directorate and the Ministry of Education, to the national capital and beyond.